Sensory deficiencies affect resources selection and associational effects at two spatial scales

Many insect species have limited sensory abilities and may not be able to perceive the quality of different types of resources while approaching patchily distributed resources. These restrictions may lead to differences in selection rates between separate patches and between different resource types within a patch, which may have consequences for associational effects between resources. In this study, we used an oviposition assay containing different frequencies of apple and banana substrates divided over two patches to compare resource selection rates of wild type Drosophila melanogaster at the between and within patch scales. Next, we compared the wild type behavior with that of the olfactory deficient strain Orco2, and the gustatory deficient strain PoxnΔM22-B5 and found comparable responses to patch heterogeneity and similarly strong selection rates for apple at both scales for the wild type and olfactory deficient flies. Their oviposition behavior translated into associational susc...